The Spark R&D Blog

The Latest and Greatest News. Period.

Riding Antarctica​

A little love from our friend Tom down in Antarctica. Not the easiest place to ship some Blaze bindings or Chomps too! Here is a note and some pics Tom was nice enough to share with us…

Hey Spark!

Well long awaited my remaining parts for my Jeremy Jone’s split board
finally turned up, after a journey of 6 months waiting, pining for
snow, thousands of miles from home and any civilization, Calling in
favors from friends and relatives far and wide, paying extortionate
prices for post/delivery, Brief conversations via satellite phone’s,
organizing the mail once arrived in the Falklands to be put onto a
fishing vessel then waiting a further month for the Fishing vessel to
come near our shores, then board our pilot jet boat to retrieve the
mail from a very rolley boat! Why all this trouble you may ask…

Showing off the new setup

Well For the next two years I’m living and working in Antarctica! with
only 8 people on this whole island, no other civilization, no shops,
no police, doctors, fire service, food stores, nothing, just us and
the science we do, I’m employed as an Electrical engineer, the only
Electrical Engineer on the island, I support the running of the base
and all equipment, including the science equipment, jet boats, power
generation, refrigeration so on so forth. Anyhow all that Stuff is
boring, the real reason I Quit my job in the UK, said good bye to
friends family, got rid of my house, sold all my possessions (including
my much loved motorbikes which I used to race) is to snowboard!!!
primerily that’s why I’m here, I’ve long wanted to go and do a season
somewhere but wasn’t prepared to quit my career as an engineer,
luckily I found a compromise, It’s great here as I’m my own boss, as
long as all my work is done and nothing is broken I can get out on the
hills, and as you can see there are lots and lots of them.

A View from the Top

I’m a die hard snowboarder, the only one on the island in fact,
everyone else skies, walking in these hills with snow shoes on is hard
work, skiing with skins is the way to go, But I couldn’t face
abandoning my board, luckily Thanks to the guy’s at The Snowboard
asylum and with help from Whitelines snowboarding magazine they
pulled out all the stops and was able to get me a split board! and how
brilliant it is too, Conditions change by the hour here so I’m still
playing with my settings but I have found absolutely no compromise in
performance, The interface kit is simple to set up and adjust, and the
transaction once you have the hang of it, is fast and relatively faff
free even in windy icy conditions. All in all the splitboard is a
marvel of a creation! it has made my life so much easier and allows me
to hit the hills hard and frequent, now it’s just a case of waiting
for the right conditions.

Tom in Antarctica

So many thanks Spark for all your help, Keep up the good work and keep
the blog updated, it keeps me sane on those long cold women-less nights
down here.

And to all you other splitboarders out there, keep on splitting and
finding new terrain, It’s great knowing that I’m the only boarder
here, and the first ever splitboard ever to be on the island and even
on the continent as far as I’m aware (with exception to Jeremy Jones of
course). I also see the lack of lifts as a blessing, the whole
mountain is my back garden which no one will ever get to explore
except me, true freedom of the hills.

Steep Approach

Attached are a few photos from a recent trip, there was a good dump of
snow on another peninsula so we boated over there, I got dropped off
and spent the day skinning to the top with some pretty steep icy
ascents in places (I’m still waiting for my Chomps to turn up) 5 hours
of climbing, brew at the top then 30 mins coming down, Still it’s all
worth it . . .